Subscribe to blog updates via email »

August 2022 Income Report

September 20 2022 – 07:10pm

An audio version of this income report is available to Patreon backers of certain levels »

August’s income was $11,295, up from July’s $10,434. Profits were $8,619, up from July’s $7,744.

WANT TO WRITE A BOOK?
Download your FREE copy of How to Write a Book »
(for a limited time)

Highest income ever!

This is the highest-income month I’ve ever reported! I’ve reported $10,000+ months seven times in the fifty-five previous income reports, but I’ve surprisingly never reported $11,000+. $10k months are becoming more common: I’ve reported $10,000+ revenue in four of the past eight months. Half!

The previous high income for a month was $10,637, which I reported in February of this year.

Almost highest profit ever

The profit was nearly a record, at $8,619. The record profit for a month is still $8,919, surprisingly from way back in March of 2018 – my third report ever. I had a big course launch that month. This month’s profits are predominantly from book sales, which I’m much more proud of.

Other revenue/profit records

This record month also helped set a record for highest yearly income and profit, and average monthly profit. I’ve made $110,722 in income and $71,872 in profit over the past twelve months. That’s an average monthly profit of $5,989.

Highest book income (and profit) ever!

I set a record in income from book sales in the past month. $10,018 is also my first $10k month from book sales, alone. That helped set a record for book sales profits: $7,924.

This helped set a record for highest yearly book-sale income and profit, and average monthly profit. I’ve made $80,997 of income from books in the past twelve months (a ten-month streak of records), and $53,026 in profit, for an average book profit record of $4,419.

Got paid for two translations!

To what do I owe this record month? Well, I got paid for two different translation-rights deals this month.

I got paid $1,200 for Arabic rights to Mind Management, Not Time Management, and $3,600 for Korean rights to Digital Zettelkasten. In reality, I got a little more than $1,000 for the Arabic rights, and around $3,300 for Korean rights, because tax was withheld. But since I don’t report tax expenses in these reports, I’m reporting the pre-tax earnings. Also, the deal for Korean rights was actually $4,000, but my agent on that deal got a $400 commission. I am not reporting that extra income and expense, though I suppose I reasonably could.

So, that’s nearly $5,000 in extra book income from an anomaly. That does make my report a little noisy. I could argue for prorating that income over the next twelve months, but that’s a bit too complex. I still get a pretty smooth idea of actual revenue from looking at moving averages. And hopefully there will be more foreign-rights deals!

20,000 copies of Mind Management, Not Time Management!

I crossed the 20,000-copy threshold for MMT! This actually makes the PredictionBook predictions I made last month “wrong.” I was only 20% sure that I would cross the threshold this month, and 90% sure I’d cross it in September’s report. (In retrospect, those confidence levels should have added up to 100%.)

Why was I wrong? I needed to sell 870 copies to cross 20k, and my average this year before July was 992 (I’m excluding July, because it was an outlier BookBub Featured Deal month, so I sold more than 2,700 copies).

I don’t remember if I looked very critically at my MMT sales report before making those predictions, but apparently not. The average alone should have made me more confident, but following a BookBub month should have been a dead giveaway. I also should have considered that the BookBub month in July would mean higher audiobook sales in August, because audiobook sales are reported a month after the fact.

So, I was wrong for plain-ol’ bad judgement. But that’s why I practice making predictions! To improve that judgement.

As it turned out, I sold 1,090 copies in August, for a total of 20,220 copies sold!

Did my Kirkus review work?

I’ve already mentioned that I was happy with my Kirkus review because I got a good quote to use in marketing materials. But did the review itself lead to any sales?

I didn’t notice any spikes in Amazon sales of MMT related to the timing of the review. But I wouldn’t expect anyone who pays attention to Kirkus reviews to buy from Amazon anyway.

I did notice an uptick in sales through Ingram Spark, though. Ingram Spark’s reporting is a little opaque, but here were the number of copies sold as of August 19th, the day I accepted the review to be published on the Kirkus website:

• US Print-On-Demand: 5
• US Global Connect: 3
• UK: 32
• Australia: 1

And here was the number of copies sold after the month was through:

• US Print-On-Demand: 10
• US Global Connect: 26
• UK: 40
• Australia: 1

So, sometime in the last twelve days of the month, 23 copies were sold through the Global Connect network. It’s possible these sales were motivated by the Kirkus review.

Then again, two issues of Kikus’s magazine have been released since then, and my review was not featured in either of them. I couldn’t figure out where to subscribe to Kirkus’s newsletter, so I don’t know, and doubt, my review was featured there.

So, my review has thus far gotten little exposure. I still need to talk to Kirkus about options for promoting my review.

Record not helped by ActiveCampaign revenue

It was anomalous that I got two foreign-rights deal payments in this record month, but I also didn’t get help from unusually high or even average ActiveCampaign revenue.

I earned $343 from referrals this month. Payouts have been highly-variable lately, but that is definitely on the low side.

The average payment over the past year has been $1,200. In a couple months I’ll be due about $2,700. Numbers like either of those would have made it an even bigger month.

AMA/Livestream a success

Thank you to everyone who submitted questions and came to my recent AMA/Livestream. I really enjoyed it. I’ll be releasing it on the podcast soon, but you can also watch the recording on YouTube.

Enter my giveaway to win my 20 favorite creativity books

During the AMA, I announced my new giveaway. I’m giving away what I think are the 20 best creativity books, spanning mindset, biographies, and methods.

Enter to win here.

Thank you for having me on your podcasts!

I have had a lot of podcast invites over the past month or so. I’m getting asked excellent questions from hosts who clearly know my work, which is always an honor. The episodes are starting to trickle out.

Thank you to Costa Michailidis for having me on the InnovationBound podcast.

Income

Book Sales

Digital Products

Affiliates / Advertising

Love Your Work Podcast

Services

Expenses

General

Advertising

Hosting

This post is filed under Income Reports.